Richard Stallman Receives Prestigious 2001 Takeda Award

Tokyo, Japan - Monday, December 3, 2001 -
The Takeda Foundation of Japan has named Richard M. Stallman,
president of the Free Software Foundation and founder of the GNU
project, as co-recipient of the 2001 Takeda Award. As part of this
honor, Stallman will receive a monetary award of approximately 33
million yen (currently about US$268,000).

Dr. Stallman receives this honor for launching the Free Software
Movement and leading the development of the GNU operating system.
GNU, started by Stallman in 1984, is a completely Free Software
operating system: it gives users the freedom to copy, share, modify
and redistribute the software. The Free Software Movement, started
along with GNU, advocates and defends these freedoms worldwide.

Stallman shares the full 2001 Takeda award of 100 million yen with two
other recipients. Ken Sakamura receives the award for developing and
promoting the TRON architecture, a real-time operating system
specification for embedded systems. Linus Torvalds is honored for his
work on the operating system kernel called Linux, which is normally
used together with GNU. The GNU/Linux system, which combines GNU and
Linux, has over 20 million users worldwide.

The Takeda foundation will bestow this year's award in a ceremony in Tokyo
on December 4th. Stallman will attend the event, and speak about his work
in the Free Software Movement.

In 1990, Stallman was awarded a $240,000 fellowship by the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. As with the MacArthur award,
Stallman will invest the Takeda award to pay his future living
expenses, so that he can work full time promoting software freedom and
coordinating the GNU project. Stallman receives no salary nor travel
expenses from the FSF and assumes a modest living style to facilitate
his continued work championing the cause of free software.

About GNU:

GNU/Linux is the integrated combination of the GNU operating system with
the kernel, Linux, written by Linus Torvalds in 1991. The various
versions of GNU/Linux have an estimated 20 million users.

Some people call the GNU/Linux system “Linux”, but this misnomer leads to
confusion (people cannot tell whether you mean the whole system or the
kernel, one part), and spreads an inaccurate picture of how, when and
where the system was developed. Making a consistent distinction between
GNU/Linux, the whole operating system, and Linux, the kernel, is the best
way to clear up the confusion. See
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html
for more explanation.

About the Free Software Foundation:

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting
computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute
computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of Free (as
in freedom) Software—particularly the GNU operating system and its
GNU/Linux variants—and Free Documentation for Free Software. The FSF
also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of
freedom in the use of software. Their web site, located at
http://www.fsf.org, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux.
They are headquartered in Boston, MA, USA.